Mannequin
by Lee Savage
Summary: Post-finale. Just asking, and everything is hers. The Lieutenant has prayed to the spirits for such guidance, but no, he's just a powerless, naïve fool. If only he'd been born a powerful, naïve fool.


The Lieutenant never doubted Amon. After his former life ended in bloodiness, he swore to set forth a brighter future. Amon cared. Amon understood.

Then came the Avatar, and the Lieutenant saw her body arch and move in that way, that way like a spider-rat twitching after being sprayed with toxic chemicals, suspended in its tangled web. For all of her stupidity, she wasn't lying.

Oh, what a fool he'd been.

There came that age before Amon. Desperate, sick after stewing in his own hot tears and saliva, tasting the bittersweet illness in him as he drank away his days. All of his days were only along one road; the road where there were no brakes, no steering wheel. He could have died and never bothered to raise his groggy head out of his liquor-induced stupor.

They'd been through so much together—he and Amon. Without the hope that things would get better, he'd surely revert back to a spineless nothing.

He wanted to rip off the man's, the leader's, the savior's, the hero's mask off and demand the truth. To know if Amon was laughing inside when the Lieutenant told him, with his voice shaking, about Nuan's torture at the hands of Red Monsoon bloodbenders, how they ripped the child straight from her womb, made her bleed (so so much too much) as he was paralyzed, helpless and trying to scream and get to her and hold her and brush her hair back and say that they'll get through this.

Words of reassurance. That's what he needed when his leader was a false savior, a charlatan. Even though the Lieutenant would never see Amon the same way again for lying about something so many of their recruits had endured, if his loyalty to the cause was true, if his loyalty to the Equalists, to his lieutenant, if—if he was honest in wanting to resolve all of the horrible atrocities festering in Republic City—

After everything, he expected that reassurance. An apology. Now that Amon was no longer a symbol, but a man.

Amon lifted the Lieutenant into the air and that feeling of helplessness and his insides compressing—twisting—returned after over a decade. Over a decade.

And he was nothing more than a puppet to those benders, to his own leader. His companion. His friend.

Images didn't flash by, but rather trickled in an indiscernible stint of time. The Lieutenant never even considered that he was still alive until the agony overrode the numbness. His wife, dead at the hands of bloodbenders as he survived two encounters. Always the survivor. Until there was nothing left to greet him.

The betrayal hit him as he laid aching after Amon discarded him, but he also considered the younger recruits, the ones so blinded by idealism, that light that forever cast their eyes in a bright sheen. He failed them. He shouldn't have trusted so easily. Then none of them would have to suffer the repercussions. The fate of nonbenders was grimmer than ever before. They'd be further persecuted, perhaps with laws worse than Tarrlok's as a backlash.

With that light in their eyes, where would they wander to now? Into the streets again? Off to their own destruction?

* * *

Years later, the Lieutenant finds himself being the political leader of a party that seeks equality for nonbenders. A non-radical group. The Equalists long scattered into the streets, violence increasing as they defended themselves against gangs wanting to prey upon one of the lowest points in recent nonbender history, as they were rounded up and imprisoned.

Eventually, he's elected as a Councilman. A rather divisive decision decreed that there would be six Councilman—the sixth would represent the nonbending population of Republic City and was required to give proof they'd been born there—a step never required for the five other members.

But there's room for a split vote, they argued. It's discriminatory to benders. They all were supposedly representative of the same city. They can't trust nonbenders—after all, they compose a large part of the prison population.

He's not used to the full attention being on his leadership. The only Equalist who ever saw the Lieutenant's face, besides the man who pretended to be an exterminator with him, was Amon himself, long before his subordinate renounced his loyalty; the man considered Amon to be his equal once upon a time, and thought Amon reciprocated that affection.

Affection? Yes, a deep admiration for a man above all expectations and draconian rules, a man of charisma and fervor—

—a waterlogged, charred corpse washed up on the docks after an inspection of a strange explosion near the city's horizon. (Burnt beyond recognition. If only he could laugh at that.) Only a single corpse found, and the Lieutenant didn't need to be told it was Amon. Amon was a coward who'd lost all support, had nobody (rather fitting). It was only appropriate that he died alone while fleeing. Anything else would be a cruel mercy.

The Lieutenant must've sustained permanent damage to his mind after his extensive hours drinking his grief away before he met Amon. Or Amon might have very well implemented his disgusting power to alter his second-in-command's ability to see reason. He might as well humor himself.

The Lieutenant has almost no confidence in any way except force. Poignant speeches can be ignored, run over by louder words. Petitions can be crumpled, laws vetoed.

As he expects, the Avatar is a glory hound, and she arrives at Republic City after a few years of training at home to oversee the healing of the world's most "prosperous" and "diverse" city. No doubt the history texts will recount how the glorious Avatar Korra singlehandedly fixed the city and assisted the dimwitted wretches.

She speaks about how Republic City is the gateway to new advances in technology. The Lieutenant almost has trouble stifling his laughter. He doesn't stiffen as she comes by to meet with the Council members. Never one for tact or decorum, she stumbles over her greetings. When she stands in front of him, she clumsily shakes his hand. She never saw him without his mask, crumpled on the ground when he confronted Amon. She'd been on the ground, in too much pain to bother.

"Good afternoon, Avatar. I am a representative of the Equalist Party."

"The Equalist Party," she repeats uncertainly.

He says evenly, "I am not a radical, Avatar. I am willing to do what's best for my people. We do not endorse the rampage of that megalomaniac." Something lurches beneath his ribcage, and her eyes narrow. It's been years and details blend into one another. His voice—his past disguise was not particularly adept at concealing of his visage, but she never stood in front of him and really looked.

All of their encounters were a blur of fists and fire. Well, except the time she was in disguise, but he never realized that was her, and he still does not.

Her smile dissipates. Unwarranted protests cross her mind. No, Korra. Peace, love, respect, balance, patience.

Oh man, patience.

"If you try _anything_," she warns, placing a finger on his chest.

He smirks. "Will you force me? Use your bending to tame me?"

She pulls away in shock, grimacing. "I—I would never do anything like that."

"Yes, you would, but if you truly aren't going to make me your mannequin, I have no reason to fear you. I've seen it all, Avatar. We may not have a revolution, but we'll have a voice. My people won't be confined to spider-rat cages. I'm sure it'll delight you to know that the curfew for nonbenders Councilman Tarrlok enacted is still in place. Now more than ever. I was once received an angry message at home about my lack of attendance at a crucial meeting, but I replied that it was past my bedtime and I wasn't allowed out of bed at such late hours."

The Avatar nods. "I'll see what I can do."

Of course. He's heard it all before. "Oh yes, because you're the pinnacle of goodness. A beacon for the lost. Don't you have little games you need to play?"

The Lieutenant crosses his arms, and the Avatar's jaw sets, her eyes piercing in response to his amusement. "Look, I'm not here to fight. Equality takes both sides. There needs to be a response, lessons the ignorant meed to learn. I'm here to help."

There in the chamber, they stand defensively, flushed and daring the other to make a move.

* * *

When their romps begin in a nauseating heat of need and disdain, it's always behind closed doors: her bed secured in an opulent abode, his office, and it's always teeth and nails. Nothing is remotely touching about their joining, the merging of the forever privileged and the formerly destitute. He wants to bruise her, make her feel something for once in her spirit-blessed life of pure glass and whistles. A life where she can get everything back on a whim. On a whim while Nuan is in the ground, her blood, splashed in like a child's bath, long curdled and her ruined organs a meal for the spider-worms.

Just asking, and everything is hers. The Lieutenant has prayed to the spirits for such guidance, but no, he's just a powerless, naïve fool. If only he'd been born a powerful, naïve fool.

Then there are their conversations, no more fulfilling than their nightly meetings with biting and sweat and tears. In her moments of attempting to say that she's matured and that she understands what it's like to fall and have nothing, he shouts.

No, she doesn't know pain.

"I'm sorry for everything, but I'm trying. We can do this together, I think." She smiles a smile like sugar, like the neat little bow she suspects her half-hearted reassurances will weave.

After all, it's all too easy for her. She has power, beauty. She has him. To consult, to argue with, to share a bed because even with her power and suitors she's rotten and lonely and confused. Malformed like a berry grown too fat, lumpy and ugly, rotting with coarse fuzz as it dangles off a spindly stem.

He's lonely too. After the cries and screams and porcelain platitudes plastered all over the walls, on his tongue as he goes into the city to speak with his people, he's jaded toward any words of hope and change.

Nothing reaching into his skin to take the ant-beetles out of his skull. Not his assurances that his purpose is true, the smiles of those who get the protection they deserved, those released from jail because of insufficient evidence, the Avatar raking her nails over him and biting and making him bleed all over again. His tongue is always dry and swollen, trapping unsaid grievances.

When he goes to the less fortunate areas, she follows. "I'm going." The Avatar tilts her chin up and puts her hands on her hips. As imperious and demanding as ever. Sometimes she makes plans before he's even fully dressed, picking his clothes off the floor and dangling them away from him. The Lieutenant expects her to threaten to burn them, but she just piles them on top of the sheets and tells him to hurry up.

Much like he once supported force to gain attention, she's a physical creature. How she ever "unlocked" her spiritual side, he'll never guess. The man supposes it's a part of some universal game that's not in his favor.

"Why?" he'll reply, "So you can tell them that things'll get better if they try harder?"

"No. All people are my people," she says. "I'm supposed to bring balance." That only further infuriates the Lieutenant. No, it's got nothing to do with helping others; it's all about _her_ duty. Whatever makes her sleep at night. Her title. What the newspapers will say about her, what pictures she'll be in.

She can only relate to pain through her experience of only being able to bend one element for the hefty expanse of a week. But oh, if she was ready to dive off a cliff from being a "normal" bender, surely she feels true sympathy for those with no means of fighting back and believes them to be competent equals! Her voice is always patronizing, but he supposes it's better than blatant disregard. She'll kneel and say hello to the street children, soon turning her back to the crowd as her eyes are glossy with unshed tears.

* * *

"What is this?" she asks one night.

She's staring up at the ceiling, her hair tousled and free. It's always made up in extravagant ways, and she once explained that it's meant to make her appear more sophisticated. The adult that she is. For the Lieutenant, she's a toddler playing dress-up, and his insides churn at the thought that her culture, while a world away, is closer to his former leader's background than the pitiful street urchins lumbering with their heads down and eyes shadowed. The blues she wears are not calming, but reminiscent of crushing waves and the unrepentant sea that swallows all trespassers equally.

He has his back to her and reluctantly turns to gaze at her. Instead of a smirk or a snarl or tear-filled, guilty eyes, the Avatar's eyelids droop, her lips giving none of her emotions away.

"What do you mean?" he says, his own fatigue settling in. If only he kept the stamina from his earlier years, now eroded after having his back knocked into the hard ground innumerable times.

She shakes her head. "Nothing." The moon casts her in a ruddy light that makes her older, the shallow wrinkles under her eyes more pronounced under its spell.

Though the Lieutenant is a trusting fool, he suspects the nature of her question relates to what they've done for months now. The Avatar never stays more than a few days, but those sparse days pull the Lieutenant into a thread of self-effacing anticipation as warped and splintered as knotted timber. He watches her for any change in her expression, but she closes her eyes.

Perhaps she doesn't realize she mumbled those words at all. Here he is, once again at the beck and call of another puppet-master. First swearing his life to the man who was the poor farmer boy who wallowed in sullen, damp streets and watched his family die. Then to the monstrous bending prodigy who manufactured a new skin from the woes of countless others who truly endured the infliction of scars both physically and emotional, all permanent and not sloughing off with the caress of water. Stitched with negligent precision.

In a moment of unnatural tenderness, he brushes loose strands of hair away from her forehead. Smiling mirthlessly, he whispers, "I'm sorry, Avatar, but I've already had my fair share of commitments."


End file.
